Hi Daniel....... I was talking to a Friesaner a couple of years ago and he told me that Frisian has a lot of ties to English as well. Certainly in pronunciation.... apparantly it was a way Frisian smugglers used to be able to tell if their group had been infiltrated by Excise men - the accent was so different from Dutch that a non-Frisianer couldn't pronounce it (and nobody from the islands would have joined the Excise so they couldn't get around it that way!) Apparantly they used a test phrase, something about green cheese. In Dutch there is no soft "ch" sound as in English - it's the same as your German enunciation. Anyway, in Dutch that would have been grun Kaas - in Frisian grun Cheese. (like English). So if the infiltrator couldn't say it they drowned him.

Hmm...... I'm not sure you should tell anyone from Flanders that their language is a dialect of Dutch ( I remember some of the names my Grandmother used to call people from the Netherlands!).

You are right about the cultures though - and it has always amazed me how different things can be in a country so small.

My mother's family came from Mechelen, near Antwerpen - and many of them still live around there. I visit them sometimes, especially my cousin Michelin (who has a bar in Leuven) and Louisa (who has a bar in Antwerpen).

And the beers are always cold!!!!!

Skol!

Graeme